Getting Healthy with Honey

I know everybody's worried about health right now, so how about some health food? The Good Goodies: Recipes for Natural Snacks 'n' Sweets (Stan and Floss Dworkin, 1974, but mine is from the sixth printing, October 1976) is loaded up with good old '70s ideas of health food.

You gotta love the cake, cookie, sundae, and pretzel parading around in clown shoes with their arms around each other! (I think the cookie's pecan is supposed to represent a nose, but I can't help seeing it as a representative of an alien race that keeps its genitals right on its face.)

Anyway, this book follows the general '70s health food rule that refined sugar is terrible, but honey and maple are A-OK because they're somehow not sugar. And of course, powdered milk is the healthiest thing in the world because of protein and calcium, which leads to this epitome of '70s "healthy" recipes:

Well, it's hard to make icing without powdered sugar, so just thicken honey with a whole bunch of powdered milk and call it icing! Sure to be both tasty and load the kiddies up with nutrition.

Of course, the recipes are not all as simple as dumping powdered milk into honey. There are labor-intensive recipes to turn dried fruits into dried fruits stuffed with other dried fruits and seeds. (Plus honey, obviously!)

Yes, it certainly is fancy to stuff dates with raisins and sunflower seeds. (And it's definitely worth putting all that work into rolling and stuffing rather than just dumping it all together and calling it trail mix.)

Even though chocolate is a "health" food today, this book exhibits the classic '70s health craze's horror of chocolate, so we have such wonders as Mock Chocolate Custard (with the goodness of powdered milk, plus carob)!

And don't omit the lecithin granules! They're what make the custard creamy (as opposed to, say, dairy that's not in powdered form).

I know my cookbook's original owner (SallySue Mato, who got it from her grandma for Christmas in 1976 if I can trust the inscription in the front cover) didn't fully buy into the panic against chocolate, though, as I discovered this vintage foil Santa candy wrapper used as a bookmark:

My favorite recipe in the book just might be from the cake chapter. While I already had an Asparagus Cake recipe, I did not have an Asparagus Torte until now!

I'm a sucker for anything that requires egg yolks, honey, and asparagus chunks in a blender that's already ground up a batch of nutmeats! The whole nutty, honeyed, besparagused confection is leavened with nothing but whipped egg whites, so NO TESTING for doneness unless you want to make the thing collapse. Just shake to make sure it won't ripple when you think it might be done. Then enjoy your honey-nut asparagus cake. It's '70s healthy, so it's gotta be good.

Loafing Around

I promised some meat loaves from 365 Ways to Cook Hamburger (Doyne Nickerson, 1960), so get ready for some serious loafing.

Nickerson was a big believer in fruit-and-meat loaves, so he has not one, but two banana meat loaves-- well before the current banana loaf craze. (At least the current one is for bread!) There's a banana meat loaf for just the family, serving four and featuring the usual suspects of onion and bread crumbs with the mashed banana.

Then there's the company one, from back when people had company, which serves 8 and adds bacon strips topped with thick slices of banana for that special "Wow!" factor.

Or you can go pretend-Hawaiian with Hamburger Luncheon Meat Loaf.

Okay, it doesn't actually say this is Hawaiian, but Spam (sorry, canned luncheon meat) plus pineapple is clearly code for Hawaiian in all these old books. They might as well tell cooks to adorn this with a tiny floral shirt and lei. (Those are best added after basting with the brown sugar/ vinegar/ mustard mixture, right before serving!)

As another example that "California" cuisine meant something very different back then, there's a California Meat Loaf. It's not grass-fed ground beef with a sourdough and artichoke stuffing or anything like that...

It's hamburger with catsup, corn flakes, and raisins. (That sounds suspiciously mid-westy to me! Definitely more midwestern than Californian....)

I was a bit surprised that this next recipe wasn't labeled the California Meat Loaf.

Maybe fans of hot avocado think this sounds great, but seems like a waste of an avocado to me.

Meat rolls show up in the meat loaf chapter too, often using the stuffing as a way to work some veggies into the kids' diets.

I can imagine my childhood self meticulously eating around the seasoned mashed peas layer.

If you really want to fool the family, though, maybe try presenting the meat loaf as dessert:

Yes, hide the meat loaf under a velvety layer of mustard meringue! The kids will be afraid of lemon meringue pies for weeks afterward. (Oh, well. More slices for you!)

Actually, as much as Nickerson loved fruited meat loaves, I'm kind of surprised there's not a Lemon Meringue Meat Loaf or a Sour-Cream-and-Raisin Meringue Meat Loaf. Feel free to make up your own dessert-inspired meat loaf combinations!

The Daily Hamburger

Some of us are pretty boring. In the winter, I eat just about the same thing every day: fruit and oatmeal for breakfast, soup and salad for lunch. The oatmeal gets swapped out for peanut butter toast once it's warmer, and the soup transforms to a stir-fry. Mr. Crocker usually picks dinner, so there's a little more variety, but it's often a sandwich and some form of potato. I'm not complaining. I like being boring because I'm a set-in-my-ways contrarian. (That also means I don't mind having to stay home all the time-- a real bonus right now!)

Some people want a little more variety than they can really afford, though, so Doyne Nickerson wrote 365 Ways to Cook Hamburger (1960) for all those families whose budgets could only handle hamburger, even if they wanted a more diverse diet.

The author claims that he "ate hamburger three times a day and learned to prepare it in dozens of different ways" during the Depression, which makes me suspect he was seriously overestimating his protein needs. (For breakfast, he recommends frying a donut-shaped burger patty with an egg in the middle, which sounds like it could be a keto-friendly recipe now.)

To be clear, though, there are plenty of era-appropriate "health" food recipes in addition to the straight-up meat-and-eggs stuff. Here's a nice blending of '60s health food and the ring craze.

I imagine the kids will line right up for good old Hamburger-Wheat Germ Ring. It combines the healthiness of wheat germ with the elegance of a ring mold. What more could a mid-century family ask except for a sea of creamed vegetables in the center of the ring? (But maybe I'm underestimating the appeal of wheat germ to children, as one blogger's young son seemed pretty excited about the Hamburger and Wheat Germ Peppers from this same page.)

The cover blurb about recipes for 1 to 100 people is true, too. The hamburger and egg breakfast is a recipe for one, and here's a recipe for two:

Why anyone would want to eat meatballs on a bed of broiled canned fruit is beyond me, but Nickerson must have realized this was a pretty niche recipe since it only serves two.

If, however, you want to have 49 of your closest friends over for the ever-popular English muffin pizzas, then this book has the proportions for you!

It will take 6 pounds of hamburger, 7 pounds of pork sausage, and 50 English muffins. Of course, it would be more helpful if this had done the multiplication for us for the rest of the ingredients. How many cans of tomato paste will make 50 tablespoons? (Answer: If you're a little skimpy, you can make two 12-oz. cans work, or buy an additional 6-oz. can if you don't want to short anybody.)

If you're having 99 friends over, maybe make something that requires a little less individual attention, like chop suey.

Wait-- no bean sprouts or soy sauce? This is American Chop Suey, which is apparently a New England pasta dish influenced by Italian-American foods rather than by Chinese-American foods (and also not Farmer's Chop Suey, which is a different thing too)! Mid-century people really must have loved the name chop suey.

But if you just want something different from the usual, maybe this recipe from the genre of "foods-stuffed-in-other-foods" will do.

If you've ever longed for an olive stuffed into a prune stuffed into a meat ball smothered in cream of mushroom soup, well, you're apparently not alone. Or maybe by the end of the book, Nickerson was running out of ideas and just throwing together whatever was in the pantry and calling it a recipe (not that anyone ever does that!). Either way, if you're disappointed by the lack of meat-loafage in this hamburger-centric post, take heart! There were so many weird ones that they will get a separate post of their own.

Funny Name: Be More Specific Edition

"Hey, honey, what would you like as a side for dinner tonight?"

"That thing."

"Uh, what 'thing' would that be?"

"The thing with the mushrooms."

"What thing with the mushrooms?"

"You know, that mushroom thing!"

"Oh! That Mushroom Thing!"

Thanks to Scioto Memorial Hospital Auxiliary Cook Book (1972) for being more specific.

Cooking with Creepy Angels

Are you ready for some creepy little girl angels? No? Too bad.

Today's cookbook specimen is Heavenly Dishes: Favorite Recipes from the Good Cooks of Our Lady of Mercy (Dec. 1958). While those weird little angels whose wings are nearly indistinguishable from their apron ties grace most of the pages that introduce chapters, my favorite chapter introductory page omits them.

I love the fish gasping at the sight of a sizzling steak and a steaming chicken descending toward him. I can't decide whether he's agape at the thought of such a feast being carelessly tossed in his direction or whether he's having a sudden revelation of the fate of being cleaned and cooked that will surely befall him if he bites on the lure at the hook-shaped bottom of the "y" on poultry. Regardless of whether the look of shock is for surprise at good fortune or horror at fate, it's hilarious.

Considering that this is an explicitly Catholic cookbook and starts with a list of fasting rules and complete abstinence days (no meat on Fridays, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception, and Christmas) plus partial abstinence days (which I didn't even know were a thing! Meat was allowed only at the principal meal on Ember Wednesdays, Saturdays, and the Vigils of Pentecost and All Saints), I expected a lot of vegetarian and fish-based recipes. The book had surprisingly few, and a lot of them were pretty standard (macaroni and cheese, omelets, tuna patties). A few were interesting though, like this spin on chow mein:

Considering the near-absence of vegetables (aside from a few mushroom fragments in the soup) and lack of soy sauce, I guess the only thing that makes this tuna-based Chow Mein Loaf chow-mein-ish is the can of noodles. (Dowsing the whole thing in "Velveta" white sauce doesn't help make it seem any chow-meinier.)

The cooks did have some good ideas about how to structure the baking duties around attending mass, though. (They must have liked sweets a lot better than meatless days.)

I'm not sure what's so "cowboy" about the Cowboy Cake. (Maybe cowboys really liked cinnamon streusel?) The cake is great for Sunday mornings if the dry ingredients are mixed the night before, the moist ingredients are added in the morning, and the whole thing is popped into the oven before the family leaves for Mass so they'll have either a hot treat or the smoldering remains of their kitchen waiting for them when they get home.

My favorite recipes in the book may be the interpretations of Italian food, though.

Pizza Rustica is more of a meat-lovers' pot pie than a pizza, with no actual sauce (unless you count the eggs mixed with the grease that will render out of the raw bacon as the pie cooks) and both a top and bottom crust.

And lest the Pizza Rustica and Chow Mein Loaf recipes make you think that the cooks who contributed to this book were completely averse to adding vegetables to their cooking, I'll leave you with this Easy Spaghetti & Meat Balls recipe.

This has onions in the meatballs AND tomato juice and catsup in the spaghetti sauce. (And that list of sauce ingredients is complete, by the way! No need to muddy up a perfectly-good catsup-based sauce with other vegetables or seasonings....)

I wasn't sure how to end the post, so I'll reassure you that the book has some handy housekeeping hints in it too. Here's one that you're bound to find useful in your day-to-day life: "Try waxing your ashtrays. Ashes won't cling, odors won't linger and then can be wiped clean with a paper towel or disposable tissue. This saves daily washing." No need to thank me for all the daily ashtray washings I just saved you!

In your slimy bonnet, with all the mayo upon it, you'll be the weirdest lady in the Easter quarantine

This seems like the year to go for a very practical Easter bonnet. Who needs one to wear when you can't go anywhere? What we need is an edible Easter bonnet, but not one that takes anything fancy-- Something that can be made from common pantry staples.

Well, given my love of Jell-O based "salads," it can't be much of a surprise that I've found a gelatin bonnet! The Mary Margaret McBride Encyclopedia of Cooking Deluxe Illustrated Edition (1959) is proud to present...

... a huge daisy with flies crawling on it? No-- a baby with three bows in its hair but no face? No-- it is an Easter bonnet.

All it takes is two boxes of lime gelatin (whip part of one for a different texture!) and plenty of orange-juice-flavored mayonnaise. Happy Easter! (And who knows, maybe if you quadruple the gelatin content to make it nearly solid and nail this thing to the front door, it will scare the plague away from your house? It's worth a try.)

A Barrage of Beans from Mary Margaret McBride

Now that I've finally kind of got a handle on turning my in-person classes into online classes and the emails from students and administrators have slowed from their initial drink from the fire hose intensity, I'm trying to enjoy quarantine by checking out a book I picked up just before all of this hit. Luckily, it's a doorstop of a book, so it should keep me happy for a while.

Okay, you probably can't tell how massive Mary Margaret McBride's Encyclopedia of Cooking Deluxe Illustrated Edition (1959) is just from the cover, so here's a picture from the side.

My Half Price Books must not have imagined anyone would want to wrestle with (much less store) approximately 1500 pages of recipes (not counting the index and the extra pages for recording one's own recipes), so I got it for $5! (The cheapest listings I see online are ten times that.)

Of course, I haven't had time to look at all those pages, but since everyone is looking for pantry recipes now, I thought the "Bean Bakes for Parties and Meals" might be the right chapter. Well, it's right if you count staying at home as a party, which I totally do! If you're down to cans of beans, the book has all kinds of ways to doctor them up, as grandma used to say.

If you still have a few fresh veggies and some bacon, there's Boston Bean Casserole.

If you a bit of syrup and ham, well, there's Baked Beans with Ham and Syrup.

Use corn or maple syrup! Bonus points for flexibility.

If you're down to just processed meats and condiments, there's Baked Beans with Meat.

If you're a guy living alone and want to pretend that this is somehow made more exciting by eating canned beans, there's Bachelors' Beef and Beans.

(I guess there's nobody to get bent out of shape when the flatulence sets in.)

If you have lots of cans (baked beans, kidney beans, and luncheon meat!) and you want to imagine you can actually invite people over, there's Surprise Company Special.

The surprise company may just be thankful that they are imaginary.

If you're just about ready to snap, there's Snappy Baked Beans.

Yay for beans, ketchup, cookies, and a hot dog.

And if you want to pretend you're going on a fun trip to the Southwest, try Texas Bean Bake.

I'm not sure curry powder in kidney beans and deviled ham is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Texas, but who knows what the outside world is like anymore? I'm just happy that I'll have this book as a souvenir of being able to go on mini-vacations to the bookstore.

Funny Name: Impressive Edition

Maybe the standards for showing off were very low in Springfield, Ohio, as this recipe from Calico Cookbook (The Auxiliary Community Hospital, Sept. 1976) seems to suggest.

Mixing canned soup and mushrooms with Miracle Whip, ham, and a smidge of chopped veggies was about as flashy as it got! (Or maybe they were anticipating a post-apocalyptic wasteland where owning one of the remaining cans of cream-of-anything soup was a point of pride?) (On a completely unrelated note, I still have some cans of petite diced tomatoes!)

April Surprises from Martha Meade

Martha Meade's Modern Meal Maker (1935) begins April with a cruel April Fool's trick. Did you think you were done with fruitcake when Christmas ended? Guess what!

The Surprise Loaf Cake's surprise is that the family is expected to choke down another fruitcake for April. Yay.

At least everyone knows to be on the lookout for Sperry's Wheat Hearts, as they end up everywhere. This month, they're kicking the traditional ground beef and rice out of stuffed peppers.

Sperry Stuffed Peppers are full of canned corn and Wheat Hearts. (This pulls double duty by using cooked Wheat Hearts in the filling and uncooked as the topper. Meade must have felt really proud of figuring this one out!)

Her love of savory shortcakes shines through again this month, with an Asparagus Shortcake.

The shortcake itself is cooked in a ring, the perfect shape to fill with three pounds of asparagus and a cheesy sauce. (I thought the '50s and '60s were obsessed with ring molds, but the mania started much earlier!)

My favorite bread-and-veg combination for April just might be the All-in-One Pancake Roll, though.

It's kind of like sausage-and-spinach stuffed cannelloni, but instead of pasta, the stuffing is wrapped in pancakes. I keep imagining how spongy and soggy the cakes must have gotten under the layer of tomato sauce (seasoned with salt and pepper! So daring.), but some odd corner of my brain also loves the thought of turning a stack of pancakes into a cheese-topped casserole. That really seems like the April Fools-worthy joke!